


Fragrant In The Morning

by contraryGreymalkin



Category: Homestuck
Genre: AU, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-25
Updated: 2013-02-25
Packaged: 2017-12-03 14:49:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/699422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/contraryGreymalkin/pseuds/contraryGreymalkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time around, Kanaya wasn't there to save her.  Her dreams promise her a second chance.  Feudal Japan AU for Femslash February.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fragrant In The Morning

**Author's Note:**

> Contains content that may be distressing for some readers. Tread carefully.

_I wish I'd had someone to stop me._

She stands at the edge of the well, kimono torn, and green with blood, like time leaking from a rip in space. Whatever time means now. Whatever space means now, or luck, when there's nowhere to go and nothing left to gamble.

_Someone to stop me._

Grey hands lay lightly on the stone, green eyes searching for a trace of red in the water. The other girl was down there so long, how is it possible she's left nothing of herself behind?

And yet her absence is an immutable fact, the well dark and cold and empty.

_Stop me._

Lips barely move, her voice barely stains the air, but she knows the maid hears her. Wherever she is.

"Instruct me how."

 

'Complementary' is a good word, Kanaya thinks, stretched on the soft grass with Aradia's warm hand in her own as they watch the cherry blossoms fall, pale pink in the moonlight, scattering across the grass.

"They should be red," she says without thinking, and flushes at the answering grin.

"We're red enough for them, don't you think?"

Kanaya starts to protest that she's _green_ , not red, then she catches the maid's meaning and flushes even harder.

 

_People don't understand death. It's not like you think._

She's taken to sleeping in the shrine. (Sometimes the human priests try to send her away but the oni always shout them down.) She hasn't dared to touch Aradia's recuperacoon, though she knows sleeping without sopor isn't good for her. But she's afraid it will dull her dreams, and her dreams are her only guide.

_Life is just a game. So are space and time and light, but look._

Aradia shuffles a set of mahjong tiles, lays them out.

_This is space. You know how to play it, ne?_

Of course she does. She can recite strategies in her sleep, can build her walls and clear her hand before anyone else is half-done, and she knows there's no mahjong variation that works like the layout in front of her does, but she's not awake and this isn't mahjong.

Aradia lays out a second set.

_And this is time. Play it._

"I can't."

_L00k, Kanaya-chan! Y0u're n0t l00king! L00k at the tiles and play!_

It's odd, the way her voice still hollows out when she's angry. It's also the one thing Kanaya hates about her, and if doing the impossible will make her stop, then she has to say yes, doesn't she?

Several minutes later, she looks down at the tangled mess on the mat, her hand resting on the green dragon tile she's just placed down, and bows her head.

"I'm sorry, Megido-san. I can't."

Her head jerks back up when something sharp scrapes the skin of her hand, and when she looks again, one of the needles in Aradia's hair is missing.

_Try again._

 

"What about your senpai?" Aradia asks one night. They're sitting by the river, watching the fireworks - a silly human tradition, but one the oni can appreciate, a gesture of fearlessness in the dark.

"Her eyes are elsewhere." It's difficult to say, but the softness of the miko's hair as it spills over her horns and trails onto Kanaya's shoulder makes it easier.

"The brownblood," Aradia murmurs, and Kanaya should hate that she knows, but there is only understanding in the other girl's voice. "The would-be samurai who challenges windmills by the sea. I know him. He comes to the shrine on new moons, to beg the gods to grant him courage." She lifts her head, raising a hand to the jadeblood's face. "I always ask them to grant him a spirit like yours."

 

_Again._

In her dreams, Kanaya plays, and loses, and plays, and loses, and plays, and loses, and plays, and loses, night after night after night, until one night she loses a little less badly.

_Time is a dimension of space, and space is a dimension of time, do you see? I need you to understand. We all need you to understand._

She wakes up in the shrine with sunlight on her face, and a doll clutched in her hands.

 

Humans don't understand Girls' Day. Kanaya knows this from having spent three springs in a row with Jade. Human girls only _collect_ dolls, bring them out once a year to display them, as if to say, "Hello, I am a girl, and this is who I am and where I belong," and nothing more. She tells Aradia this, and Aradia laughs, gently and like moonlight.

"Humans are strange, yes. But they do have claws, Kanaya-chan, they're just better hidden."

Oni are much better at it. Oni dolls are a study of anatomy and structure, equally a threat or a promise of devotion: _I've been watching you closely. I know you._ Kanaya makes two dolls that year, one for Vriska, the other for Aradia.

She will never forgive herself that misstep.

 

_Hurry._

She doesn't understand time.

She never really has. It's only a utility to prevent events from colliding overly much, as far as she's concerned, not like the delicately tuned web that is space - size, distance, all these properties are transparent as a still pond to her, and this understanding makes it easy to get around Vriska's retainers and find a safe path back to the well.

She's still not really sure what she's doing there.

 

When Tanabata comes, she waits at the river for hours. The lanterns come, bobbing with the current, but Aradia doesn't.

Dawn comes instead, and Kanaya goes hunting. It takes her hours still to find the blood trail, rust-red and stale, spotted here and there with blue.

It ends at the well.

 

_...not much...naya, ple...time..._

She thought the voice would be stronger here, in the place the body was found. (The place Aradia died. The place someone dragged her to, biting and clawing, and left her with blood pouring from her slit-open belly, a mockery of a warrior's death.)

Instead it's broken and weak, syllables wind-scattered like sakura, leaving her alone and shivering in the dark, bounded by cold wet stone.

_...Kana..._

The long-haired doll is in her pocket, her hand clenched around it like a totem. _I can't hear you, Aradia-san. Please speak louder. Please instruct me._

She closes her eyes and strains her ears, seeking just a few more words...

_...'ll d...fin..._

Nothing but static.

Closing her eyes helps, blots out the dark, so dark down here even an oni can't see her hand in front of her. She releases the doll, reaches out and places a palm on the rock, then the other, her movements unerring against the sharp curve of the wall, praying she's right about what Aradia wants to tell her.

Space is time. Time is space. And she has to play, before she runs out of both.

_Aradia-san, I'm coming._

Kanaya lets out a breath and begins to fold back time.


End file.
